Summary:
ZIP code 56308 is home to a single middle school: Discovery Middle School, which serves grades 6–8 with an enrollment of 898 students as part of the Alexandria Public School District in west-central Minnesota. Because it is the only middle school in the ZIP, the most useful comparisons are against its own district and against Minnesota as a whole. For context, 28.06% of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and its student-teacher ratio is 15.8 — both useful reference points when reading the performance figures below.
The school's trajectory is clearly positive. Over three years, Discovery moved from 119th to 100th to 74th among Minnesota middle schools, climbing from the 78th to the 86th percentile and earning 4 stars in each of 2023–24, 2024–25, and 2025–26. In 2025–26 it ranked 74th of 546 middle schools — the 86th percentile. Its district also performs well, ranking 55th of 458 districts statewide, in the 88th percentile with 4 stars, so the school sits within a strong local system.
On test scores, reading is the clearest strength: all-grade reading proficiency is 57.7%, above the district's 55.3% and well above the state's 48.6%, and every reported grade level meets or beats the district while topping the state. Reading also improved 4.62 points year over year while the state slipped slightly. Math is solid at 51.3% — 6.4 points above the state but 3.5 points below the district — with 6th grade tied at 52.8, 7th grade at 44.5 (+0.8 over district), and 8th grade at 56.8 (+1.0 over district); math was essentially flat year over year. Science needs careful reading: the all-grade figure of 19.9% looks weak against the district's 31.1%, but science is tested only in 8th grade, and there Discovery's 19.9% slightly exceeds the district's 19.6% and the state's 16.7% — though it did fall 7.1 points from the prior year.
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